The Steam Autumn Sale has begun

It’s that time of year again: Leaves are falling from the trees, and relatives are making unpleasant digestive sounds in the living room. That can only mean that Steam’s Autumn Sale is once again upon us, its raft of game deals poised to visit havoc and devastation upon our wallets.

In recent years, the Autumn Sale doubles as Steam’s own strange game awards nomination system. When you get tired of browsing the featured deals of the day, you can nominate games for awards in the categories Valve has cooked up for this year. You can pick any game to nominate in any category, but the trick is you can only nominate any game once – so you can’t pick Monster Hunter: World for both the Game of the Year award and the Best Environment award, like I just tried to do.

Participating in award nominations gets you an upgradeable Steam badge. There are four tasks to complete, and you get an upgrade each time you finish another one. The tasks are: Nominate at least one game, nominate a game in each category, play a game you’ve nominated, and review (or update your review) of a game you’ve nominated.